I think this works well if you’re already a practitioner in a domain and have repeated exposure to its problems.
For many indie developers, though, that assumption doesn’t always hold. We’re often not domain experts, and starting purely from personal pain can be misleading if the pain isn’t shared or frequent enough.
In my experience, the challenge isn’t “starting from yourself” vs “starting from keywords”, but figuring out how to get close enough to a real problem space to develop that kind of insight in the first place.
For many indie developers, though, that assumption doesn’t always hold. We’re often not domain experts, and starting purely from personal pain can be misleading if the pain isn’t shared or frequent enough.
In my experience, the challenge isn’t “starting from yourself” vs “starting from keywords”, but figuring out how to get close enough to a real problem space to develop that kind of insight in the first place.